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Effect of the formation of the Isthmus of Panama on Atlantic Ocean thermohaline circulation

Nature volume 393, pages 673–676 (1998)Cite this article

Abstract

The Late Cenozoic closure of the seaway between the North andSouth American continents is thought to have caused extensive changes in ocean circulation and Northern Hemisphere climate1,2. But the timing and consequences of the emergence of the Isthmus of Panama, which closed the seaway, remain controversial1,2,3,4,5. Here we present stable-isotope and carbonate sand-fraction records from Caribbean sediments which, when compared to Atlantic and Pacific palaeoceanographic records, indicate that the closure caused a marked reorganization of ocean circulation starting 4.6 million years ago. Shallowing of the seaway intensified the Gulf Stream and introduced warm and saline water masses to high northern latitudes. These changes strengthened deep-water formation in the Labrador Sea over the next million years — as indicated by an increased deep-water ventilation and carbonate preservation in the Caribbean Sea — and favoured early Pliocene warming of the Northern Hemisphere. The evaporative cooling of surface waters during North Atlantic Deep Water formation would have introduced moisture to the Northern Hemisphere. Although the pronounced intensification of Northern Hemisphere glaciation between 3.1 and 2.5 million years ago substantially lagged the full development of North Atlantic Deep Water formation, we propose that the increased atmospheric moisture content was a necessary precondition for ice-sheet growth, which was then triggered by the incremental changes in the Earth's orbital obliquity.

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Figure 1: Palaeoceanographic records spanning the time interval 2–5.3 Myr.
Figure 2: Comparison of carbonate sand-fraction mass accumulation rates (sand MAR) at sites 999 (left axis) and 846 (ref. 6) (right axis) plotted versus age for the interval 2–5.3 Myr.
Figure 3: 3 Calculated obliquity amplitude fluctuations31 and the benthic oxygen isotope record of Site 65915 versus age for the past 6 Myr.

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Acknowledgements

We thank R. Zahn, S. Franz, L. Keigwin, D. Oppo, N. Driscoll, R. Norris, J. McManus and T. Bickert for discussions and criticism, and S. Hustedt and A. Richter for technical assistance. This work was supported by the Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG).

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  1. Gerald H. Haug

    Present address: Department of Earth Sciences, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California, 90089-0740, USA

  2. Gerald H. Haug: Correspondence and requests for materials should be addressed to G.H.H.

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  1. GEOMAR, Forschungszentrum für Marine Geowissenschaften, Universität Kiel, Wischhofstrasse 1-3, D-24148, Kiel, Germany

    Ralf Tiedemann

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Correspondence to Gerald H. Haug.

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Haug, G., Tiedemann, R. Effect of the formation of the Isthmus of Panama on Atlantic Ocean thermohaline circulation. Nature 393, 673–676 (1998). https://doi.org/10.1038/31447

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